New Book: “Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them without Protection”

Undocumented and authorized immigrant laborers, female workers, workers of color, guest workers, and unionized workers together compose an enormous and diverse part of the labor force in America. Labor and employment laws are supposed to protect employees from various workplace threats, such as poor wages, bad working conditions, and unfair dismissal. Yet as members of individual groups with minority status, the rights of many of these individuals are often dictated by other types of law, such as constitutional and immigration laws. Worse still, the groups who fall into these cracks in the legal system often do not have the political power necessary to change the laws for better protection.

In Marginal Workers, Ruben J. Garcia demonstrates that when it comes to these marginal workers, the sum of the law is less than its parts, and, despite what appears to be a plethora of applicable statutes, marginal workers are frequently lacking in protection. To ameliorate the status of marginal workers, he argues for a new paradigm in worker protection, one based on human freedom and rights, and points to a number of examples in which marginal workers have organized for greater justice on the job in spite of the weakness of the law.

Books

Poverty Law Conference 2016

"Yesterday, Seattle began offering some commuters lower fares for public transit based on their income. Individuals making less than $23,340 a year and families of four making less than $47,700 annually now qualify for a program called ORCA LIFT, which will give users rates of $1.50 per ride, less than half of usual peak fares."

"When you ask people what impacts health you'll get a lot of different answers: Access to good health care and preventative services, personal behavior, exposure to germs or pollution and stress. But if you dig a little deeper you'll find a clear dividing line, and it boils down to one word: money."

"Richard Reeves and Joanna Ventor of the Brookings Institution have a new paper out examining the impact income level has on unintended childbearing among single women.* They found that women have about the same amount of sex regardless of class, but poorer women are five times as likely to have unintended births than more affluent women. A huge chunk o […]

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 25 percent of the energy used in schools is wasted. In a world of shrinking budgets and resources, energy-efficiency savings in utility costs could be used for desperately needed funding for additional teachers and school resources. Nowhere is this more important than in our nation's poorest […]

"Missing from the recent growth of Rhode Island’s solar and wind-energy sectors are renewable projects that serve low-income residents. Of the 100 or so projects built in recent years with state subsidies, only a handful benefit affordable housing and low-income groups."

"Scholarships can be used at school-based programs. But scholarships also can be used at high-quality early-education programs operating out of centers, churches, nonprofit organizations and homes — many of which are located in low-income areas. Scholarships are a both/and solution."

"Amid all the fanfare that West Michigan is becoming an increasingly prosperous and attractive place to live, we may sometimes forget it has a serious child poverty problem. More than 35,800 children living in Kent County, the state's fourth largest county, live in poverty. That's 23 percent of all children in the county, and represents a 40-p […]

"On Sunday, the county transit system for the Seattle metropolitan area begins hurtling down a road that few cities have traveled before: pricing tickets based on passengers’ income. The project, which is being closely watched around the nation, gives discounts on public transportation to people whose household income is no more than 200 percent of the […]

"The potential loss of Low Income Pool dollars, and the lack of a plan to replace this program, will dramatically impact millions of individuals and families who are low income, among the working poor, as well as Medicare and Medicaid recipients throughout Florida. More than 1.1 million patients, who receive their health care from Federally Qualified He […]

"About 150,000 low-income adults in Wisconsin might have to start paying premiums to keep their Badger-Care -- and they might have to pay more if they smoke, or engage in other risky behaviors. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau uncovered those proposals when it analyzed Governor Scott Walker's two-year, $68-billion budget package. It said the governor […]